A quietly engaging time-travel love story.
In Wiens’ fantasy sequel, a widow’s long-lost love—from more than 400 years ago—rejoins her in the present day by inhabiting another man’s body.
After someone pushed her off a cliff, nurse practitioner Karen Schmidt spent a month in a coma. During that time, she seemingly hallucinated a journey to 16th-century Antwerp, where she fell in love with blacksmith Pieter Smid. When she finally awakened, her life quickly turned tragic, as her soldier husband, Peter, died in combat. Though devastated, Karen and her two children try to move on, and she opens a medical clinic with her doctor friend, Josie Bennett, in the Palouse, a region encompassing several state borders in the Pacific Northwest. But Charlie Walden, a veteran living on the street, flusters her when he suddenly insists that he’s Pieter. Despite his deep knowledge of Karen’s days in Antwerp, she doesn’t buy his claims. Pieter, whose consciousness is, in fact, in Charlie’s body, settles into his new identity and finds a job as a ranch hand. Along the way, he struggles to adjust to the faster pace of the modern world. It’s not long, however, before his and Karen’s paths cross again, and they get a chance to rediscover the love they once shared. Wiens’ follow-up plants itself solidly in the modern day, abandoning the first installment’s tendency to shift into different time periods. This begets a slower narrative, but it enriches the focus on the main characters as well. Karen, for example, is shown to suffer PTSD–like symptoms due to losing her spouse and surviving an attempted murder. Charlie’s attempts to adapt to the 21st century result in welcome moments of humor, as he steers clear of what he sees as breakneck “self-propelled metal carriages” and despises the addictive “talking picture box.” The understated romance makes this sequel considerably less grim than its predecessor, which was set during murderous witch trials; nevertheless, there is one particularly gruesome turn. Wiens ends this sequel with a satisfying resolution and even ties off a lingering subplot from the first book.
A quietly engaging time-travel love story.Pub Date: Oct. 29, 2021
ISBN: 9798987879610
Page Count: 312
Publisher: Independently Published
Review Posted Online: Dec. 15, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Doesn’t entirely hang together but still manages to hit the spot.
In an alternate early-20th-century Montreal, sparks fly between the operator of a cat shelter and a reclusive magician.
Agnes Aubert is not kindly disposed toward magicians, especially not after a magical duel blows a hole in the building that housed her and her cat shelter. Unfortunately, finding another spot isn’t easy, so she’s happy to take the reasonably priced location on the Rue des Hirondelles. But that’s before she discovers the building’s owner secretly living in the basement: Havelock Renard, the world’s most powerful magician, who also happens to be allergic to cats. As this decidedly odd couple work out a system for cohabitation, Agnes develops some uncomfortable feelings for Havelock; she also can’t deny her attraction to the police detective who thinks (not entirely incorrectly) that the shelter is a front for the illegal sale of magical Artefacts. In comparison to the carefully constructed universe of her Emily Wildeseries, Fawcett’s worldbuilding and plotting are a bit sloppy; the magical system is not laid out as clearly as more pedantic readers might wish, and there’s one part of Agnes’ quandary that gets resolved in a rushed, not truly believable, way. The book also implausibly suggests that an allergy to cats is curable by exposure (rather than managed by a magical antihistamine, perhaps?). But one has to admire the author’s acumen in finding the absolute sweet spot for a cozy fantasy, after all the other ones set in cafes and adorable little shops. It could seem either twee or a cynical grab at the market, but it’s neither; Fawcett clearly understands the complicated but rewarding relationship between humans and cats. It is also charming to set a story in Montreal, where both brioches and bagels are on offer.
Doesn’t entirely hang together but still manages to hit the spot.Pub Date: Feb. 17, 2026
ISBN: 9780593973257
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: Nov. 8, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.
Using mystery and romance elements in a nonlinear narrative, SenLinYu’s debut is a doorstopper of a fantasy that follows a woman with missing memories as she navigates through a war-torn realm in search of herself.
Helena Marino is a talented young healer living in Paladia—the “Shining City”—who has been thrust into a brutal war against an all-powerful necromancer and his army of Undying, loyal henchmen with immortal bodies, and necrothralls, reanimated automatons. When Helena is awakened from stasis, a prisoner of the necromancer’s forces, she has no idea how long she has been incarcerated—or the status of the war. She soon finds herself a personal prisoner of Kaine Ferron, the High Necromancer’s “monster” psychopath who has sadistically killed hundreds for his master. Ordered to recover Helena’s buried memories by any means necessary, the two polar opposites—Helena and Kaine, healer and killer—end up discovering much more as they begin to understand each other through shared trauma. While necromancy is an oft-trod subject in fantasy novels, the author gives it a fresh feel—in large part because of their superb worldbuilding coupled with unforgettable imagery throughout: “[The necromancer] lay reclined upon a throne of bodies. Necrothralls, contorted and twisted together, their limbs transmuted and fused into a chair, moving in synchrony, rising and falling as they breathed in tandem, squeezing and releasing around him…[He] extended his decrepit right hand, overlarge with fingers jointed like spider legs.” Another noteworthy element is the complex dynamic between Helena and Kaine. To say that these two characters shared the gamut of intense emotions would be a vast understatement. Readers will come for the fantasy and stay for the romance.
Although the melodrama sometimes is a bit much, the superb worldbuilding and intricate plotline make this a must-read.Pub Date: Sept. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9780593972700
Page Count: 1040
Publisher: Del Rey
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
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